The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to providing failover for storage controllers used with information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Many information handling systems include storage systems such as, for example, Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) storage systems. For example, such information handling systems may include servers that access storage devices in the RAID storage system via storage controllers, and in many embodiments, more than one storage controller is utilized by the servers to access those storage devices. It is desirable to provide for failover of those storage controllers in the event that they fail or otherwise become unavailable. Conventional systems for providing for failover of storage controllers includes the provisioning of a secondary storage controller along with a primary storage controller, and having an administrator manually configure the secondary storage controller to take over storage controller functions when the primary storage controller fails or otherwise becomes unavailable to the server using it. In such systems, the secondary storage controller is “redundant” and “passive” relative to the “active” primary storage controller (sometimes referred to as an “active/passive” failover system) in that the secondary storage controller does not perform any functions for the information handling system. As such, dealing with a failure of a primary storage controller is a manual, time-consuming process, while secondary storage controllers in some conventional systems may never actually be used (i.e., in the case where the primary storage controller never fails or otherwise becomes unavailable), resulting in wasted hardware and expenditures for the “insurance” storage controllers that were not needed.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved storage controller failover system.